The Soul Stealer
by Sonyvaio
Summary: Ever since the end of the Second giant war, Nico felt like he had a home, almost like he belonged. All of it thanks to one certain demigod; Will Solace. But who was then viciously torn from Nico's heart who tumbles into darkness once again. But when Thalia grace and her hunters come to camp, can she heal the empty abyss that is Nico's soul before he begins to fade again… for good.
1. Chapter 1

**What's up people of Fanfiction. So ever since I finished the Blood of Olympus I've wanted to write another fic, so here it is. It's been far too long since I wrote one. If any of you remember some of my old stories here's an update: I honestly don't know if I'm going to finish them because I was such a NOOB back then and I think I'm a little bit better now, I repeat, I think :). So I'm not sure what's happening with those. But I have my heart set on giving it my all with this one. For that reason I'm trying to make it like a legit novel with introductions and new characters and everything. That is the reason that you'll see a few introduction chapters and seemingly useless characters, but believe me, they definitely have a role in the story. Without further a do I invite you to please read, and hopefully, enjoy my story.**

Thalia Pov

Thalia Grace, daughter of Zeus, Hunter of Artemis, eternally fifteen year old girl, walked back up the hill to where it all started: Half-blood hill. It was summer, a few months after the second giant war, the sky was blue and there were a few clouds in the sky, giving the sky some contrast. The trees were all luscious shades of green and the birds chirped happily until the group passed under them. The sun beat down on the hunters of Artemis, on the apparent twelve year old girl leading them but finally on the three demi-gods lacking a little while behind the party.

She remembered the day they had stumbled across them. They were hunting in the rich and rolling hills of Texas, near Austin. The monsters they were chasing were a rogue pack of dracaena led by two empousai in their attractive human disguises, but not attractive to her of course. At first they were hunting them in the forest but as the afternoon slowly progressed and the shadows got steadily longer, they left the forest and entered the meadows, stocked with hills, of Texas.

They ran and ran and slowly but surely the pack began to slow. The hunters were able to keep a fast pace for far longer because that tends to happen if you're immortal and they were hunters, naturally able to chase prey in the wild so they slowly started to rope them in. Mile after mile went by but they caught up to them eventually in a small town not too far from Dallas.

They were so close to them now that they could see the ends of the monster party around every street corner and road they turned. Most of the hunters were running along sidewalks, trying to ignore the looks that the mortals gave them, while others were trying to be a bit more inconspicuous; running on the roofs of buildings alongside the road, like something out of Assassin's creed game.

They caught up to the pack at a warehouse on the outskirts of town. They were so close that some of the hunters, especially the ones on the buildings, were able to loose a few arrows. The monsters entered the warehouse and right as they were about to rush in Artemis held up a hand for them to stop.

"I want to scout it out first, this could be an ambush waiting to happen." She said. "Why refuge here when they could hide in the city? There's plenty of other spots." She said as an afterthought.

"Thalia, take Tyla and get me information. Do not engage." She warned. "Tell me what they're doing, if there's an ambush and ,if you can, try and figure out what is so special about this particular building."

"Yes my lady." She said obediently

"Oh and Thalia…"

"Yes?" she asked

"Do be careful, I'd hate to lose my Lieutenant... again." She murmured the last part.

Thalia smiled. "Yes my lady." She said again.

She and Tyla entered the building. Tyla was a small girl at the age of ten. She had a slim build and black hair so dark it would've made coal look light. She had a mouse like face with beady emerald green eyes, looking back and forth, always alert, searching for danger. But it was her scar that drew people's eyes towards her. She had one long, centimetre wide, scar, forming a curved line that connected her left side of her upper lip to her left eye. However besides the unnaturally dark hair and disturbing scar there was one other distinguishing factor about young Tyla; she was an expert knife thrower.

Sure she was as good as any of the other hunters with a bow and arrow but her skill with knives was not only uncanny and unparalleled, but disturbing as becoming a hunter gives you expert archery not knife throwing. When she first joined the hunters many had asked how a ten year old girl had learnt such a thing. She never responded. Speaking of disturbing, how she was found by the hunters was also disturbing and possibly the reason she had her scar, but that's a story that Thalia didn't really feel like thinking about.

They decided not to enter through the main entrance.

' _Too obvious'_ Thalia thought.

Artemis ordered the hunters to give them a boost as they climbed the crumbling wall to a window on the second story. As the warehouse was old and the wall they were climbing was particularly dilapidated, there were plenty of small handholds to the window. Thalia looked down gave Artemis a quick nod of her head and she disappeared into the window.

She flung herself through and looked both ways down the dark passage. Nothing. The coast was clear. She kept looking as Tyla climbed through.

"Which way?" She asked

"Doesn't really matter I suppose." Thalia responded

"Left?" asked Tyla

"Why not?" she responded. But she knew from experience that a decision like this could mean the success or the failure of a mission, but it wasn't like they had any clue as to which way.

They crept towards the end of the hall, the soft padding of their boots masking most of their noise. They got to the end of the hallway without any taps or incidents. They peeked around the corner and saw a cyclops and a dracaena hiding around the next corner, crouched, and ready to strike at anyone who came from the entrance around the bend. She gave Tyla a nod and they both leapt out from the cover of the hallway. Before the monsters were able turn around they both gave disgruntled cries of pain as both impaled by two missiles, one spinning end over end, the light glinting of it, a split second faster than the silver missile that followed behind it.

Tyla smirked at her.

"Too slow." She stated

"Yeah, yeah." She said "We'll have a real competition when we have an actuall fight on our hands hotshot."

They moved on, running down the stairs and entered onto a railed terrace overlooking a big square room. The stairs to the terrace, from the floor, were on the opposite corner of the room. Below them three demi-gods were huddled together pinned to the wall. Two empousai were in front of them but were arguing with a female cyclops of about their height. They were followed by a horde of dracaena and finally a huge cyclops standing by the entrance, his head brushing the ceiling, his eye closed.

Thalia and Tyla crouched in the shadow of the corner eavesdropping on the argument below.

"You can't eat them now." One of the empousai hissed. "The hunters are on our tail and we can't run for any longer, we need to fight. If you try and boil them in that huge pot you have hidden around somewhere the hunters will shoot you down long before the demi-gods are ready."

"No, why should we help you? You led Artemis and her hunters straight too us!" the short female cyclops responded. The empousai that spoke slapped herself on the four head and breathed out a long sigh.

The other said "We would've had to fight them near here anyway, then they would've noticed your tracks as well and would've put arrows straight through you!" The cyclops frowned and nodded her head, thinking.

"Fine, we'll help you, but let us cook our dinner first." Said the cyclops

"No, you half-wit! By that time the hunters will be on us already." The first empousai said

The cyclops sighed. "Okay. Bruton, tie them up." she ordered the large cyclops.

Bruton opened his eye and started silently moving towards his job, head down so it wouldn't hit the roof, depressed about the effort he had to make.

Both empousai let out a loud groan of frustration. ' _Who wouldn't_?' thought Thalia. ' _These cyclops are dumber than Percy, and that's saying something._ '

"No! At least kill them first so that they don't turn on us in the middle of the battle." One of the empousai said. Thalia had lost track.

"Never, we cyclops like our meat fresh. We can either help you, and we tie them up, or we'll take them and be on our way." She said with indignation, even though she wouldn't have known what that word meant.

"Fine, fine. We'll do it your way." The empousai hissed.

"Awesome, now you make the plan, we're not very good with those." The cyclops said sheepishly.

The empousai mentally slapped herself for getting blackmailed by this idiot.

"Ok." She said "You and- what's the big cyclops name?"

"Bruton."

"Right Bruton. You and Bruton tie up the half-bloods. Do you see the pile of timber and materials in the corner?"

"Yes."

"Once you've tied them up, you and Bruton pick up as much as you can and get ready to throw them at the entrance of the room when the hunters come through. I'll also assign some dracaena to shoot arrows in their direction when the hunters get there."

"Sounds like a plan." The cyclops said cheerfully.

The cyclops and the dracaena moved to do their respective jobs.

"Tyla. Go and tell Artemis what's going on here about the ambush at the-." Thalia whispered

"Yeah, yeah I know about that." She interrupted

"Fine, also tell her to try and get as many archers up onto the terrace as she can, that way we can try and ambush the ambush." She gave her a wink.

Tyla smiled "Ok." she responded. And off she went, silent as the three demi-gods who were trembling in fear.

"Wait we have another cyclops standing guard by the window. He could help throw the stuff." the female cyclops said to the empousa.

"Excellent. Martha!" she called. An extremely strong looking dracaena came over to her and stood attention.

"Go and call the other cyclops, but tell Jill-"

' _Wow these things have weird names._ ' Thalia thought…

"to stay there and guard the window entrance." The empousa ordered Martha.

Martha started to walk up the stairway and proceed onto the terrace

' _Shit._ ' She thought to herself

"What are you two going to be doing? The cyclops asked

"You were to dim-witted to notice the secret passage behind the entrance to this room. Once you and our forces are engaged with the hunters we'll spring out from behind. Should be a nasty surprise." The second empousai chuckled.

' _Fuck. I shouldn't off told Tyla to go so soon. I have to warn'_ \- but her thought were interrupted as she discovered, to her horror that the second dracaena was only around the next corner. Her heart rate immediately picked up as she frantically thought about what to do and her palms slowly got moister. She realised that she couldn't back away to the shadow, and refuge, of another corner as she would have to cross the terrace, where the horde of monsters would surely notice her.

Under normal circumstances she would have been able to easily kill a dracaena, even one as strong as this, but she had to do this sneakily so that the empousai think that Martha reached the guards or the empousai would find out that the window entrance into the warehouse would be unguarded because otherwise she wouldn't of been able to get into the building in the first place and then the hunters and Artemis wouldn't have a safe entrance into the building. Plus she had to find a way to prevent the empousai from reaching that secret door or some of her long term friends would be massacred when some of them entered through the main entrance.

She drew her dagger and held it close with both her hands, tip pointing towards the ceiling.

The dracaena was now five metres away…

Her breath was frantic…

The empousai were almost at the entrance….

A single drop of sweat slid down her face…

The dracaena was three metres away

Her heart was pounding…

The empousai about to leave the room…

The dracaena one metre away…

She closed her eyes, steadied her breath and in that moment she knew what she had to do. She pictured the dangerous thing that had to be done, and felt as she became the dagger and it became her. It was now a mere extension of her arm. Her eyes opened and she pounced.

As the dracaena slithered past her, and saw her with surprise in its eyes, she swept it with her left leg, causing it to trip and as it fell, face forward, she brought up the dagger clutched in her left hand and plunged it straight into the beast's right eye, directly to the brain. She rotated quickly on her heal and caught its mouth and brought its head into her shoulder, as it let out its dying breaths, to mask and noise.

Martha was no more.

She leaned the corpse against the wall, so it was sitting with its back resting on the corner she hid behind.

' _Now to stop those empousai, well here goes nothing. So much for Artemis telling me not to engage._ ' She thought and adrenaline pumped through her veins as she leapt the three metre high terrace and landed right in the middle of the horde of monsters.

The empousai turned around at the noise.

"What's up, fuck faces!" she asked as the two empousai transformed into their true forms.

 **Anyway, hope you liked it. I'm hoping that the next chapter will be up in a week. Sonyvaio.**


	2. Chapter 2

**What's up guys. Listen, i am so sorry it took me this long to update but school has been so hectic and my marks, well, haven't been great. Anyway here's the next chapter, this will be the last Thalia intro chapter;). So next chapter will be a Nico (# the boss of all time) and there will be more plot an drama, but until then I hope you enjoy this and i'll make the same promise i made last time, i'll try and post a new chapter in a few days. Oh yeah, i did the noobiest thing. When i first uploaded the story the name was 'the Sole stealer' which i didn't mean to do as that means the bottom of a . So that would've been really embarrassing later on. Shout out goes to** Celia0901 **for pointing that out. great logic;). Without further a do i hope you enjoy**

 **Thalia Pov**

The empousai transformed into their true forms. Their bodies writhing and squirming as their upper half's transformed into female vampires and their lower legs became one bronze and one donkey leg.

"Daughter of Zeus…" the one said

"We've been expecting you.' The other said

' _How would they know about me specifically_ ' she thought to herself

"Well here I am." She said staring at the second empousai.

"Normally we would take our time and have fun killing a child of the big three…" the first one said

"But alas we don't have the time." The second one said. "So we'll do you a favor, we'll make this quick," she said while licking her lips

Thalia knew that she would have to stall for as long as possible so that she bought time for Artemis and the hunters

"You're welcome to try." Thalia said. "But then you'll have to face an even angrier Artemis, especially since you'll be killing her lieutenant" she said with a bored expression on her face while inspecting her nails.

"It doesn't matter!" the first one growled. "She's going to try to kill us anyway."

"Well maybe if you'd give me a chance I could arrange for you to be taken prisoner or something more merciful than being hunted." She said

There was a brief flash of longing in both the empousai's eyes but the first one quickly recovered.

"No, you'd betray us as soon as we turned our backs on you. Better we kill you now." She hissed and an evil smile played on her lips. They started to try and take a step towards her but before they could even move an inch Thalia had two arrows knocked on her bowstring aimed right between the eyes of both empousai.

"Move and I'll kill you." She said calmly. "I might die… but so will you."

For a while there was a standoff and what seemed to be a vicious staring contest between Thalia and the empousai. But one of them eventually said "Bruton, bring me one of the half-bloods."

Bruton did as he was told and untied one of the half-bloods and handed the second empousai a boy with chocolate brown hair and blue eyes filled with panic. The empousai brought him up to her height, his back against her chest, and poised her hand over his throat, claws bared, ready to slice.

"Drop your weapons, or the boy dies." She ordered

Thalia contemplated for a few seconds, then deciding there was no way out of this predicament, dropped her bow and it clattered on the ground. She stood up, with a look of defeat in her eyes, and rubbed the silver bracelet on her wrist and suddenly she was holding a huge bronze shield with the ugliest of the ugly's on it: Aegis. She lifted it and, with _lightning_ fast speed, lifted it into the air and let the monsters behold its horror. Most of them were paralysed and some had their hands, tails or claws, depending on the monster, covering their eyes.

She then turned her shield horizontal and lopped it at the empousai holding the boy. When the empousai had been stunned, by Aegis's horror, the boy had managed to get his hands under her arm in an attempt to protect himself. The shield hit the empousai full on the face and she dropped to the ground and the boy pushed her arm away so that it didn't slit his throat.

The monsters were starting to wake up again and she ran, grabbed her shield, and dragged the boy to the other half bloods, put her back against the wall, and held her shield in front of her, ready to fight.

The empousai laughed. "You think something that mediocre will save you daughter of Zeus. Your efforts of trying to kill us are futile. If only you knew what was to become of you, why, you'd be on your knees begging us to kill you." She laughed again and they limped closer to her.

' _Whatever.'_ she thought to herself. _'I'm a daughter of the Big Three, I get threats like that every second day. The real problem now is how to get out of this mess.'_

Then she saw shadows moving along the walls of the balcony where she had been hiding and hope filled her body. She looked down, closed her eyes and smiled to herself. The empousai put her face near Thalia's ear and whispered "Too bad you'll never find out what would've happened to you, Thalia Grace. Fortunately for you, your time is up."

She lifted her right claw high and as she was about to bring it down to strike a killing blow smoke erupted out of nowhere so that no could see a thing. Thalia leaped to her right to dodge the swipe.

"No." she whispered. "Yours is" and she feinted to her right, even though the empousai couldn't see anything, and leaped onto it so that they were face to face and her legs were straddled around it. She brought her dagger up once more and plunged it straight where the beast, supposedly, had a heart.

The empousai let out a screech of agony and fell to the floor while dissipating into golden dust. Thalia landed softly on the ground and observed the chaos around her. The hunters had leaped off the balcony and, while the smoke was still there, shot arrows into many of the monsters. They didn't need to see where they were, they just knew. The hunters had the hunting instinct. The feat was so incredibly performed it would have been worthy of being in an assassins creed game, except, this was better.

While this was happening more hunters poured out of the main entrance and, while the monsters were distracted, sneaked behind them and stabbed them. That left most of the monsters taken care of, except the cyclops's. Thalia then realized that she had nothing to worry about as Artemis dispatched them.

Artemis ran in-between Bruton's legs, weaving a rope around them, then climbing up the cyclops by plunging her dagger into it and using it as a handhold. She got to its face and kicked off its eye and landed on a rail connected to the ceiling. She quickly tied a knot and the cyclops tripped over the rope. Artemis then back flipped of the rail and while she was upside down, mind you, shot three arrows into the female cyclops eye, and she landed on the ground cat-like. She looked at Thalia and panic flared into her eyes. She drew and threw her dagger in a matter of milliseconds and plunged into the second empousai, right above Thalia's head, ready to snap her neck.

It let out a gasp and fell to the floor convulsing on the ground.

"Do try to be more careful, my dear." Artemis said

"I will try, my lady." Gratitude showing in Thalia's eyes.

They then both went to the fallen cyclops and helped their fellow hunters reunite the cyclops's with their great grandfather, or great, great grandfather, who could remember, Tartarus. The hunters relaxed a little and let down their guard, as there were no more monsters to dispatch, which is why the scraping metallic voice coming from the supposedly dead empousai scared the Hades out of them.

"Enjoy your life while you still can Thalia Grace. You won't survive much longer." She coughed and spat out blood. "He's coming for you." She laughed as blood dribbled out of her mouth and she looked like something out of a horror movie. Then she took stuttering breaths and lay still, her body turning into dust.

All of the sudden her daydream\memory was interrupted by shouts, cries and the drawing of her fellow hunters bows. She turned around to see Festus, the mechanical, flying dragon of in the distance,two small figures on its back, another flying in the air. The hunters saw that the dragon was rapidly flying away from a horde of flying monsters: harpies,stymphalian birds and some small wyvern type creatures. They were flying as fast as they could but,she,and the hunters could see that the host of monsters was steadily gaining on them.

"Hunters, draw arrows!" Artemis ordered.

The hunters, and Thalia, each took steps until they were standing in line with each other while the three demigods ran and stood behind them, out of the hunters way. They then each drew an arrow and knocked it to their string.

"Take aim!"

They all made sure that the aim was correct so that the arrows would sail over the dragon and land straight into the monsters.

"Fire!" she screamed.

They let the arrows loose and the first wave sailed well over head the dragon and decimated a few of the monsters. But the hunters didn't just shoot one volley. They kept loosing arrows, all in sync with each other, at an arrow per second rate. The arrows hit the monsters like trucks and their leathery wings and feathers got shredded as the arrows pummeled into them. Most of them fell to the ground, never to fly again, while the others promptly turned around and hissed at their escaped prey.

Thalia smiled, killing monsters was routine, but she was doing it here at camp half-blood. She was doing it at home

 **Hope you liked it. See ya next chapter;)**


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